We fly ESA’s Gaia mission to map 1 billion stars – Ask us anything
Gaia’s primary objective is to survey one billion stars in our Galaxy and local galactic neighbourhood in order to build the most precise 3D map of the Milky Way and answer questions about its origin and evolution. Gaia is expected to find thousands of planets beyond our Solar System and map hundreds of thousands of asteroids and comets within it. The mission will also reveal tens of thousands of failed stars and supernovae, and will even test Einstein’s famous theory of General Relativity.
Mapping 1bn stars: We fly @ESAGaia – Ask us anything! #GaiaAMA 6 Dec 16:00CET (10:00EST) @reddit_AMA https://t.co/uinjmD2sex pic.twitter.com/FQI9bCKVgS
— ESA Operations (@esaoperations) December 2, 2016
The Gaia flight control team work at ESA’s ESOC mission control centre, in Darmstadt, Germany. This includes planning all flight activities, monitoring the health and status of the spacecraft, coordinating with the science operations centre at ESA’s ESAC Establishment in Spain, scheduling ground station passes, downloading an immense amount of science data each day and generally making sure the satellite performs as expected.
The Gaia spacecraft is unique, with unprecedented dynamic and thermal performance. In ensuring the ambitious goals of this mission are met, the team have dealt with some interesting challenges.
We’ll be live here starting at 16:00 CET – 10:00 EST – 15:00 GMT
Providing replies for the Gaia AMA are:
At ESOC
David Milligan – Spacecraft Operations Manager (Flight control team leader) [DM]
Flight control team
- Ed Serpell – Operations engineer (Payload) [ES]
- Jonas Marie – Operations engineer (Attitude & orbit control system) [JM]
- Ran Qedar – Operations engineer (Power & thermal) [RQ]
- Peter Collins – Operations engineer (Data management system, Onboard software maintenance, Ground systems) [PC]
- Jan Kolmas – Young Graduate Trainee (Star tracker) [JK]
- Gary Whitehead – Operations engineer (Telemetry & telecommanding, Mission planning) [GW]
Flight dynamics
- Ander Martinez De Albeniz (Flight dynamics) [AMA]
at ESAC
- Jose Hernandez – Science Operations Calibration Engineer [JH]
Discussion: 3 comments
Is it possible to see/image Gaia from the earth’s surface?
What optical setup would be required to do this?
Thank you :))
Answered in the Gaia AMA! https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5gt177/we_fly_esas_gaia_mission_to_map_1_billion_stars/?sort=new
Hi Nathaniel: Great Qs! Perfect for today’s AMA in Reddit – please post these there (not here in the blog). The Reddit link will be shared above and via @esaoperations shortly. TTYL8R Cheers!